(1) Field of the Invention
This invention is in the field of distributed process control systems and more particularly relates to improvements to the universal operator station module of such systems by replacing certain specially designed hardware and software components of the peripheral submodule of the universal operator station module with commercially available hardware and software.
(2) Description of Related Art
Distributed process control systems, such as Honeywell Inc.'s TDC3000, provides a computerized plant management system, a version of which is described and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,607,256, which issued Aug. 19, 1986. Each such process control system includes a universal operator station module which provides the means by which the operator responsible for the overall operation of the process or processes being supervised obtains the information needed to perform this function as well as the capability of transmitting information, including commands or instructions, to control subsystems of the plant management system to control the processes being supervised. All communications between a universal operator module and other modules of the network are via the network's local control network (LCN) BUS which provides the universal operator station module with access to the data highways of any digital process control and data acquisition subsystems of the system of the plant management system.
All of the hardware and software components of the submodules of the prior art operator station module were speciall designed to perform the functions required of an operator station module such as producing a video display on a CRT, I/O functions for keyboards, printers, etc., mass storage devices, and a general purpose data processing capability for optimizing the system, for example. There has been a tremendous increase in the performance of commercially available personal computers (PCs), their associated peripheral devices, and related operating system software, and with a concomitant reduction in their cost in recent years. Thus, it would be desirable to incorporate commercially available PCs, peripherals, and software into the peripheral submodule of a universal operator station module in place of the specialized hardware and software components of the peripheral submodule of an operator station module. The problem with doing so is that the commercially available hardware and software communicate using industry standard commercially available BUS protocols, an example of one of which is the peripheral component interface (PCI) BUS and signaling protocol. Unfortunately the PCI BUS and signaling protocol is incompatible with the BUS and signaling protocol of the module BUS. This invention provides a solution to this problem.